Something smelled rotten in the Israeli secular media’s opportunistic, agendized field day bashing the Hareidim, and the Jewish Torah, over alleged “child abuse” charges against a Jerusalem Hareidi Mother.
The stinking stench of these media accusations and police actions against the child’s Mother seem to be confirmed in this report on the matter by The Jerusalem Post’s Matthew Wagner:
Out of a deep feeling that the secular public is out to vilify and persecute them, the entire haredi public – from the most extreme and insular hassidic sects to the most mainstream elements – formed a united front over the weekend to support the Jerusalem mother who allegedly starved her three-year-old boy.
Last week reactions among haredi representatives were subdued when police, doctors and social workers publicized… incriminatory details of how a mother – a member of the Toldot Aharon hassidic sect, perhaps the most tightly knit, socially cohesive and parochial of the groups that make up haredi society – had, according to the charges, systematically starved her little boy.
…Last Friday, as more details began to materialize – first on haredi Internet news forums such as “B’hadarei Haredim” (In Haredi Rooms) and later in the written haredi press – more mainstream haredi figures and the wider haredi public threw their support behind the mother and her family.
The larger haredi public was notified that the baby boy had been hospitalized for a year at Hadassah-University Hospital on Mount Scopus and had been transferred at the request of the family to Hadassah Ein Kerem for the past seven months. During this time, the baby was under observation, which raised the question of why the mother was suddenly being accused of intentionally starving her son.
Although the police said they had video footage of the mother removing the baby’s feeding tube, this evidence has not been shown. It was also unclear how the mother had been able to remove the tube, which is surgically installed, over 20 times, as claimed by the police.
…The haredi public did not understand why a woman who purportedly suffered from a serious psychiatric disease had been arrested and placed in a prison cell for criminals, together with an Arab woman accused of killing her husband…
Wagner’s report points to several questions;
- 1/ How is it that the Mother can be accused of child abuse when the child has been hospitalized for at least a year?
- 2/ Where exactly is this “police evidence and video” (as backing up police, hospital and social service accusations against the mother) which has been bandied about in print and online in the secular media’s attacks on the Mother and on Hareidim generally?
- 3/ How is it possible, as claimed by the police and hospital officials, that the mother has removed the feeding tube some 20 times when Wagner, in his report reveals that the tube was “surgically installed”?
Basically, something stinks. In this entire affair, not the Israeli Hareidim (who look disdainfully at anything not perceived as related to their turf), not the police, not Mayor Barkat, not the Israeli court system, not the so-called “justice system” and not the social services bureaucracy — there is not one side with a proven shred of credibility. Ergo the larger malaise facing all of us in Israel today where there is not one Israeli political leader or institution capable of standing up for Israel’s right, for the G’d-given right of Jews to live in and posssess all or any part of Eretz Yisrael.
The questions which Wagner poses sting in the perspective of past history; in the light of large-scale charges in years past concerning alleged systemic disappearance from hospitals of new-born children of S’fardi parents under suspicious circumstances. And can it be that a child kept in Hadassah Hospital for over a year could have been butchered as it appears that a former prime minister allegedly was?
This author harkens back to that old TV lawyer show, which in the tradition of Perry Mason, Petrocelli, where the storyline would inevitably end with him giving his defense summation; “Your Honor, this is the way things might have happened”:
Jerusalem Mayor Barkat brought on a dispute first by attempting to open a parking lot on Shabbos inside the Old City walls. When Hareidim protested, Barkat attempted a “compromise” by opening a different lot;
“Karta” lot, a municipal deck just outside of the walls of the Old City run on the weekend by Arabs.
“You can’t open a place in the center of the city where all of the Jews are going to the Western Wall,” said Takenheim, who accused Barkat of trying to strong-arm the ultra-Orthodox to make political mileage with secular and Modern Orthodox residents of the city.
A spokesman for the mayor said the decision to open the parking lot in the center of the city was made at the request of the police because of an increase in tourist traffic, which prompted a rash of illegal parking.
The Hareidi rioting and burning over the parking lot had reduced sections of Jerusalem; Mea Shearim, Geula and the area near the Old City to resemblance to a war zone.
It appeared that no sooner did things die down regarding Barkat’s Shabbosparking fiasco when suddenly, there was this whole balagan about a skeletal child, its Mother accused of alleged abuse, an arrest and a resumption of violence in burning in Hareidi sections of Jerusalem.
The questions which Wagner raises and more give rise to this possible scenario;
- 1/ A distinct possibility that there was NO parental abuse, that the child, still skeletal after a year or more of hospitalization, might have subjected to either chemotherapy or some other experimental treatments without parental permission.
- 2/ That the doctors were possibly derelict in their treatment of the child such that, after prolonged hospitalization, the child remained skeletal weighing “7 kg.”
- 3/ That the doctors, to cover up their own failures, alleged abuse on the part of the Mother. The doctors, together with social services, saw to her arrest and incarceration in the same cell as “an Arab woman accused of killing her husband.”
- 4/ That the whole affair regarding alleged parental abuse of a sickly child was contrived by the police, social services, the media and the national government in revenge and retribution against Hareidim over the “Karta” parking lot affair.
- 5/ That Mayor Barkat could have been instituting national government policy to open the lot to Shabbos parking in order promote the economy in the Arab shuk.
- 6/ When the Hareidim fought the parking lot opening on Shabbos, the police and national government found a ready vehicle, in this sickly child and allegedly “abusive mother”, to deliver a message — to teach the Hareidim a lesson.
Under this scenario, it would seem that there is more involved here than alleged “child abuse.” The scenario indicates the possibility of human rights violations systemically perpetrated by Israeli institutions; police, social services, Hadassah hospital against both the child and it’s mother.
And more than Hareidim have a stake in the Chillul Shabbos parking lot affair. Every religious Jew belongs taking issue with two points; the Chillul Shabbos, but also the promotion of economic support for the Arab shuk among tourists and Israeli secular Jews, regardless of garb or the size or material of his kippah. In other words, we all belong taking issue with regime policies which promote Arab profits which inevitably fall into hands funding terrorism against Jews.
It’s regretable that during the 3 weeks and the 9 days before Tisha B’av that the religious sectors of Israel still haven’t got it, that we still haven’t united as a Torah Bloc which subordinates it’s sectorial issues to the national good — Mi Hashem Alei! And it is reprehensible that by not uniting behind one unifying leadership, we let evil, corrupt politicos of dubious intent divide and conquer us. MB